If traveling to Idaho is Mordor and Boise is Mount Doom, then Idaho governor and adorable gay sea mammal Butch Otter is the evil Sauron. I’ve told you how he’s the only governor in the nation to veto a cannabidiol (CBD) oil bill to help epileptic children.

[Editor’s Note: This is what Butch Otter actually looks like… though we prefer to imagine him as a sea mammal.]

So much for public health and safety!

It’s weird what Idaho considers to be safer than marijuana.

Here’s a state that steadfastly refuses to allow oncologists with years of medical school training to recommend cannabis to cancer patients battling the ravages of chemotherapy, but has no problem allowing untrained, unregulated 19-year-olds to serve alcohol.

Somehow, if you smoke a joint inside your home and then go outside in Idaho, you’re an unacceptable risk to yourself and public safety. But if you want to strap a rubber band onto your legs and jump off the bridge that spans the canyon that Evel Knievel once tried to jump on a rocket-bike, you can do that anytime with no permit required.

Somehow, if we let parents treat their epileptic children with a non-psychoactive derivative of cannabis, that will lead to an inexorable slippery slope that results in teenage pot zombies shambling through the streets of Boise in search of strains (strains!).

The only thing more terrifying in Idaho than somebody filling their chest with marijuana smoke is a woman baring her chest in a private club.

In the state’s so-called strip clubs, female dancers must remain in bikinis if the club’s untrained, unregulated 19-year-old bartenders are serving alcohol. But not the hard stuff—if there are women in bikinis on stage, it’s beer and wine only, no liquor. If she takes off her top, all the alcohol must go, and if she takes off her bottom, she and the club owner will be punished the same as if they’d been high in public.

The veto pen of Idaho’s evil Sauron isn’t limited to ensuring that epileptic kids continue their life-threatening seizures. For poor people trying to feed their kids, Gov. Sauron vetoed a bill to exempt groceries from the state’s six percent sales tax, explaining that the costs were too high for “the small amount of tax relief it would provide.”

To ensure that we marijuana consumers can still be harassed to the fullest by police, Gov. Sauron vetoed a bill to require a criminal conviction before law enforcement can seize suspects’ property under civil asset forfeiture.

The sales tax repeal, civil forfeiture reform and cannabidiol for kids bills all sailed through the Idaho legislature with broad bipartisan support. So why don’t they just override Gov. Sauron’s vetoes?

Because Idaho is one of only six states where the legislature can’t convene itself to override a veto. Only the governor can call a special session of the legislature that only meets every two years, so the governor just saves all the vetoes up for after the legislature has adjourned.

*In the last rant, I mistakenly read the punishment as a year in jail when it is only six months. My apologies for the error.